Distraction, Denial, and the Wagon

Where have I been for the last couple of days? Why haven't I been writing, when this space seems to be an incredible key in unlocking the mess of my heart and my mind? Three words: distraction, denial, and the wagon.

First, distraction.
I have such intense anxiety that eating and then running away - finding something to occupy my hands and my mind - seems to be the only way to avoid the fullness panic that leads to my evil cycle of purging, starving, and what my nutritionist calls "compensatory eating." I don't yet know how to eat and "sit" with the feeling of fullness; I need distraction to get through the high-level panic that I still experience every time I eat.

As a result, I've been trying to fill my days with errands, work, and play - so that I will have as little time as possible to be overrun by the voices in my head. I've been spending time with friends and diving into the many hobbies I have collected in the past several years. I find myself singing and taking long walks and harvesting herbs... anything to get out of my house and out of my head. And slowly, it's working. I'm eating - and tricking myself into sitting through the fullness that usually devolves into immense panic.

My heart and brain have also been deeply occupied in the last week by the possibility of a new relationship - something that seems to have crawled deeply inside me when I wasn't looking. It is definitely the wrong time; there are so many reasons to be scared and run away. I haven't opened my heart to anyone in a grand, long time... the process seems hard and foreign. But I'm realizing that my heart deeply wants to be opening, and that in doing so, I'm having to surrender in exactly the same way I'm doing in this recovery process.

Being distracted has been wonderful; I feel like a "normal" twenty-something! I have some drama, some love, and friends again - people I want to spend time loving.

But in the midst of these glorious distractions, I've been worried about being too distracted - enough that I forget the importance of this battle in which I am so deeply engaged. It's nice to find my brain occupied by "love" instead of diet plans and isolation, but I also haven't been as dedicated to doing the work of recovery in the last two weeks. I've felt better; things have been easier. But I also haven't been confronting the beast inside me with the same unsheltered intensity to which I am accustomed. I can't forget that I'm in battle, or my lovely distractions will become another excuse ED uses to keep me sick. If I'm too busy to be diligent about eating, ED will win.

So, distraction. A wonderful tool - but one to be watched closely. I don't have to be miserable; my current distractions are bringing me great happiness. And I don't have to live in a little bubble in order to do recovery "right." In fact, part of this process is learning to live a multi-faceted life... something that my eating-obsessed brain has been unable to comprehend for a long time. But I can't forget to keep working.

Onto the second piece of all of this: denial.
I have been distracted and busy, and I'm feeling happier and more alive than I have in the past several years. In fact, I've been so happy that ED's convinced me that I am already "better," and don't have to work any harder. Watching my behavior in the past couple of days, I realized that I am again back into an old pattern - I have been starving, eating, and purging with escalating intensity. But I don't feel sick. Usually, the ED process leaves me exhausted and miserable, but in the past couple of days, I have been so "happy" that I've been writing off my purging episodes and meal-skipping as events that "don't count." I don't feel sick, so even though my behavior has been intensely eating disordered, I've been in deep denial about my "slipping" away from recovery.

My distractions have led me to a place of denial - I am lying to myself and to people around me about how the past few days have been. Because I'm not altogether miserable, it's much easier to pretend things are fine and that I'm still on the recovery "track."

Honesty time - I haven't been "succeeding" in the last few days. I purged on Tuesday night - and again on Wednesday afternoon - and spend all day Thursday lost in the "eating disorder woods." Even yesterday (Friday), when I tried desperately to return to "recovery," I slipped. I wiggled out of a dinner party, and spent the evening alone and isolated, trying to figure out how to starve and purge my way back to sanity.

Which leads me to the last piece of today's introspection: the wagon. In Alcoholics Anonymous, they always say that addicts who relapse into their maladaptive behavior patterns have "fallen off the wagon." In the past several days, while I've been wandering through a space of distraction and denial, I haven't written because in my heart I know I haven't been "on the wagon."

The stupid thing about this damn wagon is that once you're on it, it's still easy to fall off. And once you're off of it, it's unrealistically difficult to climb back on. So staying on the wagon is a trick, to say the least.

My therapist told me yesterday that when we throw up, a chemical relaxant is released; anxious purgers get addicted to it and use it to calm themselves down. So, once I purge, it's damn hard to stop the pattern. I think, "this has got to be the last time," but when my anxiety skyrockets, throwing up really does "make me feel better." Climbing back on the wagon seems insensible, especially because once I'm underfed again, my brain stops being able to process anything logically and rationally.

This is all to say that staying on the wagon is hard work, and important work. If I fall, all is not lost. It's just a lot harder to crawl back on than to maintain my seat once I'm up. And if I'm not careful, any small thing can knock me off - forcing me back to the space where I'm fighting to even understand why the wagon is beneficial in the first place.

So, I haven't written for several days for those reasons. It comes down to distraction, denial, and the wagon.

I am currently engaged in something called "dialectical behavioral therapy." This means that instead of seeing every relapse as a failure, from which I have to start everything over again, I simply "recommit" every day - every hour - every minute - to this process. This is an incredibly elusive concept for my brain to comprehend - how can I commit to eating dinner if i spend the afternoon eating and throwing up? Don't I need to wait, get clean again, fast until my eating sins are gone, and THEN begin again? Don't I need to wipe the slate clean, and then work to earn my way back onto the wagon?

This kind of therapy is like grace. It says, "no." You never fall off the damn wagon. You just get knocked once in a while. No slip is too big, nothing makes the work I've already done irrelevant. My spot in recovery is not negated by my tangential voyages into the "eating disorder wilderness," I'm trying to learn that my mistakes mean nothing more than that I am a human, who must learn from her mistakes the imperfection of this process.

I've been avoiding writing because I haven't been feeling like I'm working "hard enough" or doing this in the "right way." But I woke up this morning and realized that despite my distraction, denial, and attempts to leap off of the wagon, I'm still on top of it. I just need to wake up and act like it.

Audre Lorde says, "You cannot find peace by avoiding life." In the past several days, I have been intentionally avoidant, convincing myself that I don't have time to write or that my eating disordered behaviors haven't "counted" as relapses and slips. But there is no peace in avoidance; there is no recovery in dishonesty.

I commit, in this moment, to this process - to all of the success and failure that comes with it. I'm not doing it perfectly, but I'm going to try and keep doing it any way, even though I am not "pure" and certainly haven't "earned" my way back onto the wagon. I ate lunch this afternoon - despite not wanting to do it. It was harder than it had been earlier this week - already my relapsed behavior has set me back a bit. I struggled to get it down and rationalize that I deserved to eat it and keep it. But I did. I'm having trouble with the concept that even if I mess up, I need to keep moving forward. But I want to keep moving forward, and I know that I won't get anywhere by dwelling in the past and fixing my mistakes - or by avoiding them by refusing to give them voice or attention in my heart and writing.

So, from the top of the wagon, though undeserved, I write this... in honesty.